The extraordinary rescue of crew from a stricken South Korean freighter off the US coast this week might have taken place on the other side of the world, but it serves as a reminder that safety of life at sea is a challenge everywhere. Closer to home, the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) has made

The US decision to impose travel restrictions on Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif when he made a visit to UN headquarters in New York for a 17 July meeting inflamed already strained tensions between Tehran and Washington.
In a break from the usual courtesy extended to foreign dignitaries

The candidates for two non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council for 2021–22 are now in, with three countries heading to the final stage to gather support and votes for their respective bids: Canada, Ireland, and Norway, representing the “Western European and Others” group,

In May 2016, before Brexit and Trump, the right-wing populist Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines amidst a co-ordinated disinformation and trolling campaign on social media. In a nation of 105 million where Facebook is embedded into everyday life, political

In Malaysia, a sex-tape scandal engulfing the country in recent months has threatened to destabilise the governing coalition. While the tape has been determined by the police to be authentic, and not a forgery, it is still questioned in some quarters. The truth of the video itself is a point of

You will have seen the news, possibly on Facebook or Twitter. This week, Facebook and Twitter announced that they had addressed coordinated activity on each of their platforms which appeared to be pushing a pro-Beijing message in the face of ongoing protests in Hong Kong. Together, they removed

Suggestions by the Trump administration that the United States is exploring the acquisition from Denmark of Greenland has been greeted with global derision. Greenland politicians have pointed out that the island is “not for sale” and are insulted to think that they would become part of just

Make no mistake about China’s vast and continuous trajectory of technological expansionism. Even as the US aims to ring-fence Huawei’s reach into the US and overseas consumer markets, a “digital silk road” paved by Chinese tech giants has long been built to span from the Asia-

Air pollution is worsening in Jakarta and West Java, while tens of millions of people experienced a day-long blackout earlier this month after gas-powered electricity generators failed and significant proportions of eastern Indonesia have do not have reliable power supplies. So why does Indonesia

Shame is a powerful emotion, but is it powerful enough to save the planet? Almost certainly not. But the question has assumed unexpected prominence as the sensitive Scandinavians and the schoolgirl activist Greta Thunburg spearhead a campaign to encourage us to fly less, simply because it’s the

For all the back-and-forth Hugh White has generated with his latest book, How to Defend Australia, in a national preoccupation with the China question, little serious discussion has been devoted to how to defend Australia’s southern front and cope with China’s increasing Antarctic footprint.

Seventy years ago today, following the devastation of the Second World War, the diplomatic conference of the International Committee of the Red Cross adopted the Geneva Conventions – also known as the laws of war. The Conventions describe how, in times of war, nations should treat the wounded and

If only a minister of the Morrison government would be as forthright in identifying climate change as a massive destabilising force in Australia’s region as the Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell has been.
In a private speech in Bowral in June, General Campbell is reported to have sounded

For international governance of the near-pristine expanse of the Antarctic, consensus decision making is powerful indeed. This model, is the modus operandi of Antarctic law, and has formed the basis for the successful operation of the Antarctic Treaty System.
It can be corrosive to such a

As the one year anniversary of the ongoing Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s North Kivu province draws near, the World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has sounded the global alarm about this most recent outbreak of the deadly virus.
Over 2500 cases and

This past week has seen worldwide celebrations over the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. Many iconic images from that time have been revisited, including those showing the United States flag planted on the Moon’s surface.
Exploration throughout history, especially by

The 2019 Lowy Poll found that 62% of Australians rank cyberattacks as a threat to Australia’s vital interests. This leaves cyberattacks second only to climate change as the threat Australians are most concerned about.
It is interesting to note that the poll question focused solely on

In the first parliamentary sitting week following Australia’s recent election, a bill to amend the Migration Act was introduced and tabled in the House of Representatives. This follows the introduction of similar legislation in late 2018, which expired at the end of the previous parliament. With

Once confident predictions that the world’s population will reach 11 billion by the end of this century are beginning to be debunked. It is now appears more likely that the global population will hit a ceiling before reaching nine billion by mid-century, and then begin to decline.
This tapering

The anniversary is upon us, with 21 July (Australian time) marking 50 years since the moment that human footprints were first placed on another world. The landing of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon was one of the most significant historical events of the 20th century, and

China has become more and more active in Antarctica in recent years – both in research and in the international framework of agreements known as the Antarctic Treaty System that has successfully seen the frozen continent devoted to peace and science for decades.
China is

The recent mini-series on the Chernobyl nuclear accident is a reminder that after 33 years the consequences of the accident are still very much with us. The costs to public health are extensively discussed, but the wider political consequences are also still felt. Chernobyl contributed to the

This week Japan has formally recommenced commercial whaling for the first time in over 30 years.
A small Japanese whaling fleet left port on 1 July after the Japanese government announced that it had set a quota of 227 whales for the remainder of 2019. The quota is made up of 150 Bryde’s whales

The recent discussion on cyber security has been focused on offensive cyber capability and the threat to critical infrastructure. But in the last several months, an equally troubling trend has come to the fore.
Internet shutdowns and deliberate disruptions have quickly become the policy instrument

The G20 leaders’ summit hosted by Japan last Friday and Saturday left many observers underwhelmed. The purpose of the G20 leaders’ summit, since its inception in 2008 to deal with the global financial crisis, is for leaders to work together to deliver “strong, sustainable, balanced and

A rap-style music video to promote the Osaka G20 leaders’ summit to be held on 28–29 June contains the lyrics “Let’s talk! Let’s dance! Here is Osaka wonderful city! Let’s conversation! Hard communication! Come on!”.
The promotional video was produced by an Osaka-based group made up

We intuitively know the volume of digital information yet the increasing numbers are still staggering. In 2013, 90% of all the data in the world had been generated in the preceding two years. Forecasts suggest that by 2020, there will be as many bits in the digital universe as there are stars in the

On 17 July 2014, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, and 298 people were killed. The majority of the fatalities were Dutch citizens, followed by those of Malaysian and Australian nationality.
A Joint Investigative Team (“JIT”) was established with members of five

Data, debt and plastic dumping
The prospect that China and the US are now going to use next week’s Group of 20 nations summit in Osaka to extend their trade negotiations rather than take them to the precipice may give some new life to the rest of the agenda.
Japan’s Prime Minister

Rare earth minerals have emerged as the latest front in the escalating US-China trade war. Nearly a decade after the Chinese government controversially suspended rare earth exports to Japan during the 2010 Senkaku dispute, similar threats are now being made if the bilateral trade dispute with the US

When US President Donald Trump and former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull held their infamous, protocol-smashing phone call in the president’s first week in office in January 2017, largely lost in the international headlines about the exchange was the actual topic of conversation. Now,

When the news broke that Peter O’Neill had finally resigned from PNG’s top job last Thursday, it spread instantaneously, lighting up mobile phone screens across the country.
It was social media, much more than PNG’s traditional news outlets, that had bored away relentlessly at O’Neill’s

Episode 2 of the Lowy Institute’s brand new podcast, Rules Based Audio, is out today.
In The Terrorist’s Wife – the role of women in jihad, Lowy Research Fellow Lydia Khalil discusses women who join Islamist extremist groups and lays out the risks involved if we continue to make gendered

Opposition to the death penalty has a long and quite public history in Australia. Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan of the so-called “Bali Nine” drug smugglers received support from artists, singers, actors, media personalities and sports stars, while a crowd of about a thousand people

Book Review: Unruly Waters: How Mountains, Rivers and Monsoons Have Shaped South Asia’s History, by Sunil Amrith (Penguin, 2018)
As Sunil Amrith explains in this new book, South Asia is not the only Asian region with a water problem. The whole continent has issues. Asia is

In two dramatic policy announcements this month, the Trump administration effectively barred US companies and government agencies from buying telecommunications equipment or services from – or selling any components to –Chinese technology champion, Huawei. President Donald Trump signed a broadly

Nearly five years since an international call went out for a greater global effort to combat the threat of so-called “superbugs”, what is better described as antimicrobial resistance (AMR) continues to pose a substantial danger to Australia’s health security. A recent national survey has

China’s Belt and Road Initiative is best known for big infrastructure projects such as train lines and ports, but in this age of omnipresence online, there is a communications counterpart running in parallel, known as the Digital Silk Road. But as with the physical manifestations of China’s big

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is notorious for exhibiting an unconventional diplomatic style and in recent weeks, ahead of local elections, he has picked a new foe. Duterte has been trash-talking the Canadian government – quite literally – insisting that containers of rubbish sent from

A recent surge of measles cases in the United States has seen outbreaks in 23 states and the declaration of a public health emergency in New York City. While measles was declared eliminated in the US in 2000, this latest upswing is part of an almost 300% rise in global measles cases this year.

To mark Mother’s Day on Sunday, The Interpreter invited contributors to write about their mothers who shaped world politics or were shaped by it.
Too often the “immigration debate” focuses on numbers, questions of infrastructure and congestion, and at its worst a sense of threat to “

Whatever the true situation behind the sacking of Gavin Williamson as British defence secretary over claims (which he strenuously denies) that he leaked information to the Daily Telegraph from a meeting of the National Security Committee on Chinese telecom company Huawei, one thing is crystal clear

Are the boats back? Once again a reliable fear of “uncontrolled” immigration has been invoked in an Australian federal election. This time current Prime Minister Scott Morrison has framed “border control” as a question of “congestion-busting” in major cities – and instead of the usual

On Her Shoulders, a documentary film by Alexandria Bombach, follows young genocide survivor Nadia Murad in her global cause against sexual violence for which she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. Women and girls in her community were subjected to widespread and systematic sexual

The month of April is littered with reminders of how cruel the world can be and should motivate us to be vigilant about the potential for atrocity crimes in our own time. 24 April marks the start of the Armenian Genocide when, in 1915, hundreds of Armenian community leaders and intellectuals were

The Irish campaign to gain access to the E-3 visa in the United States has roared back to life. Currently, Australia is the only country with access to the 10,500 E-3 visa slots. Yet Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, who led a delegation of US legislators on a visit to

Influence operations in the digital age are not merely propaganda with new tools. They represent an evolved form of manipulation which present actors with endless possibilities – both benign and malignant. While the origins of this new form are semi-accidental, it has nonetheless opened up

Overnight, the UN Security Council held its annual Open Debate on Conflict Related Sexual Violence. As current president of the Council, Germany hosted the debate. It has been preparing all year and held an Arria Formula meeting in February on strengthening accountability for conflict-related sexual